Wednesday, February 2, 2011

On my recent trip to Japan I was impressed to learn about the local Japanese courier service we use to deliver shoes to our customers. Unlike every other market we ship shoes from our office in China to our office in Japan, repackage the shoes then delivery locally to customers.

The Japanese courier company we use is called Sagawa. We have a corporate rate of ¥600 (AUD$7.30) for next day delivery across most of Japan. That's cheaper and faster than Australian Post but what I love most about them is that their service is amazing.

When they're on foot the couriers run everywhere they go, they literally run! They do an Outward Bound course and run up Mt Fuji as part of their training. They'll come to our office multiple times a day to pick up shoes if we need them to, and when delivering the shoes to customers they'll leave a slip if you're not home, and if they don't hear from you they'll often try again later that day, then each day after that until you either contact them to arrange a time or your shoes are delivered.

Sagawa provide an amazing service at an amazing price and it's supporting industries like these that help online retail to thrive in the Japanese market. Obviously it's easier to offer this service at this price when you're servicing a market of 127m people living in a relatively small area but the service offered by the likes of Australia Post is just too far at the other extreme. For online retail to thrive in Australia we need supporting businesses like Sagawa.

Wow! So fit and healthy. It's interesting that you don't use DHL to ship directly from China to your customers address, it seems that you are fitting in to the culture of excellence in service.I'm really enjoying learning about the online and offline details of cultural differences in your international retail business.